A new novel explores the poetic and mundane of life in space

A new novel explores the poetic and mundane of life in space NPR's Ari Shapiro talks with author Samantha Harvey about her new book Orbital, which examines the fascinating mundane-ness of outer space from the perspective of an international space station. HARVEY: And that seems to be a really common theme - that there's a sense of one's senses and one's perception being redefined by being in space. And I was so overwhelmed by the extraordinary beauty and strangeness of our planet that that's what prompted this idea to write about it - you know, to think this is sort of an element of nature writing, really, that I don't see happening. HARVEY: It is a sort of weird set of contradictions, from what I can gather, about being in space - that you, on one hand, are traveling, you know, at 17 1/2 thousand miles an hour around the Earth, so that you're in this kind of extraordinary physical situation where you're seeing 16 days and 16 nights in 24-hour period.